Feminist approaches

I am confused about the information I have read thus far about feminist approaches in qualitative research. Reading some of the theory on feminism, it seems that the feminist approaches in a purist form are concerned with unveiling and also politically combating and changing inequalities linked to gender, race, class , heterosexism, with a particular focus on women and their oppression in our society. Initially, I thought feminist approaches had to do mainly with inequalities where the oppressed are the weak, the children, women, the poor, and so on. I thought that feminist approaches in qualitative research were not limited to research participants being female. And thus, the examples that I read are confirming my initial thoughts. For example, Ramirez (2013) is interested in the examination of the Latinos/as’ process in choosing a graduate program. Her study involves both males and females! As I understand it at this point feminism is a more extremist take on critical social theory than it is a pure theory in itself. Are feminist approaches more related to challenging the masculine organization of society in general than anything? That makes me think of my own experience of taking a job as language instructor for the US Department of Defense in Iraq. I encountered many situations of sexism and oppression based on gender; I feel I had to work twice as hard and had to keep myself in a very conscious and tight state of mind to prove that I could function and perform as well as a man (I had to face adversity of negative judgment for my decision on taking such a task here in the States, there within the US Air Force, and some of my Iraqi male students); however, there were few situations where my physical weakness -based on weight and endurance , were a challenge; as a matter of fact I outperformed some of my male counterparts and military reps in intellectual and cultural awareness performance! Maybe feminist approaches also have to do with particular situations; for example, if I were to describe my experience in Iraq , working with both American and Iraqi officers, I would most likely use a feminist approach, because the cultural situation, the military cultural milieu (unfortunately) were encouraging oppression based on gender and sexism.